The Other Side
by Benjaminyatta
Summary: The Ward is home to Ben. He had lived there since he was three. Now eleven, he is told to pack his toothbrush and return to a strange couple he's sure he'd never met and a home that didn't have nurses, security guards, fences or emergency sedatives. Another world he is angered and terrified by. With no idea how to live on the other side, it begins a tale of false freedom...
1. Chapter 1

I came up with the tile last-minute, and this entire fanfic might be a little dicey, but I hope that it was enjoyed and that I might be able to get some kind of feeback on how I had done. Any reaction at all would mean the world to me.

Also, I'm going to try and keep chapter short and sweet for the sake to taking up less time. I don't want the story bogged down by purple prose.

Enjoy!

* * *

"Jesus…Settle down, you've always go to make a mountain out of a mole-hill now, don't you? You know, this kind of behavior is the kind that got you sent downstate, you know that? You want to get stuck with those women and those kids again?"

Ben didn't answer. He was told he wouldn't see them again. At least, that's what he got when the lady at the desk took his card and sent him back home, telling him some farewell that he didn't quite hear over the sound of his own confusion.

Eight years around the same people, aside from other patients, does that. It disorients, and makes the outside seem stranger than the in.

It was coming back to him, but slowly.

Eight years was still a long time.

Brendol didn't think so.

Brendol was never fed pill after pill, stuck in silent "therapy" rooms and forced to stare at a moving fan for three hours straight before the doctors came in and drilled him with a thousand useless questions.

Brendol was never admitted.

More than likely because he was a normal boy with a normal mind. He went to the public schools and played with the children that went to the public schools. He ate regular meals and slept in a bed with a thick blanket. He woke up to breakfast and his parents.

Brendol had an air of smartness that surprised and awed Ben. It was an intelligence that he'd only seen in adults and maybe a couple of the younger staff and hospital personnel.

Brendol was a God to him.

He lived down the street from Ben.

This made Brendol put a lock on his door.

But this time, he answered it.

Ben was grateful.

"Are you even listening? You came all this way just to wake me up, _for this?_ What the Hell's the matter with you?"

The boy looked angry, standing in front of the chair in which Ben currently sat, and steaming over a cup of milk. He looked ridiculous clad in the blue rocketships that he slept in, and his messy hair didn't help. It was almost unreal, and for a moment, Ben didn't believe that it was his friend that opened the door. For a moment, he was reminded of Morris down the block, who was normally disheveled due to reasons that Ben was never told. He didn't hang around Morris much, but an older lady named Louise told him that it was because he was a schizoid.

"You're smart." Ben said, absent. "You'd know. I know it. You're smart with these things. I'm dying, aren't I? I know I am. But you tell me. Am I dying? You _have_ to let me know, _am I dying?!"_ He grew more hysterical each word he said, and for a moment, Brendol took wary glances at the doorframe, down the dark hall, before he shoved the glass of milk to his friend.

"No, you're not dying. Not even close. But the way you're screaming, the neighbors will think otherwise. So will my parents, who don't know you're here. In simple, shut your trap and let me explain."

And explain he did. So much that Ben turned at least eleven different colours with expressions to match, and about two hours later, was shown the door. "And that's why you woke up like that. It's normal, you're not dying. It's Saturday, _I am._ Next time something like that happens, come on a school day. Go to your dad." He ended this with a rather disgusted expression before pushing the boy out the door and closing it behind him.

Ben turned to open the door back up again. It was locked.

He stared at the handle, and tried again. Still locked.

For a moment, this was all he did, stare at the door, look around, and feel as though it was taboo to leave the front porch of his neighbor's house. As if there was something wrong with it.

But eventually, tiredness wore him out and made him go back to his own house, despite how his knees were shaking and he felt as though he had been struck by lightning. Electrocuted, petrified. And entirely unsure if he was going to be able to get back to sleep or not.

Eventually, he got to the bedroom – his room, he had to keep reminding himself. This room belonged to him, but he found that hard to believe. It wasn't anything at all like his room. His room had pale walls, and much less…things.

He said to them, the people that he was living with, that he didn't want anything from them. But the man and the woman just kept buying and buying, so now they both didn't have any money, and he had a bunch of useless junk.

They insisted, so much that they cried about it, the man and the woman, and he couldn't do much more than let them go out and buy him whatever it was they were compelled to buy him. It was as if they thought him a God or something. Was he?

The way they were acting, bending down to his height and asking what he wanted for breakfast, anything at all, whether he was going to be "alright," and always, was he alright in the first place. They were strange people with…different…needs, and he remained comforted by the only thing that remained consistent in his life. Pill-taking in the morning, and at night. This didn't change.

The man and the woman, who told him to call them Dad and Mom (sometimes, when she got weepy and especially strange, Mommy) were always very concerned when he did this, and watched him carefully.

He glared at them while doing so, and that shut them up. They looked scared. They left the room.

Really, eight years of downing the same pill after pill, he should know how to do it by then, but they acted as if just because they pulled him from his home and stuck him in their little suburban fantasy that he was just going to forget about protocol and get as dumb as they were.

As if that would ever happen. The nurses were adamant that the take his medications on his own, and that was what he did. He cleaned his room and even the hallway outside (for Mattsi, the boy down the hall, he did his room too). The sheets were replaced on his bed at home and his bed in the new house.

The lack of a mess hall was confusing.

He wondered where they got their food for a while, until he was met with the unsettling truth – they got their food from the fridge and the cupboards.

Ben didn't have his I.D card anymore. The woman took it away from him when he left.

He felt the gooseflesh tear up and down his arms, and he began to wrap them about himself, glancing from one dot on the floor to the next. Well, damn her, damn all of them. Trying to starve him like that, taking away his card.

She knew, he knew that she did. She knew that he needed that card to get into the fridge and the cabinets. All patients did. He helped Mattsi with his, and was often called out for it. Mattsi was just so dumb and helpless it was annoying, but he did it anyway. It was the only way to shut him up.

But here, in this place, there was no Mattsi.

Ben shuddered. And back at the Ward, there was no Ben to get food for Mattsi. Mattsi would starve. Poor kid. Not like he had a long life ahead of him, but it still made Ben feel sick, letting him go like that.

Well, if Mattsi can't have food, than Ben couldn't either.

With that settled, he went back up to his "bedroom."

And didn't get past the threshold before being assaulted by the mass of colour and general busy-ness that there was in there. No clean, pale walls, and no pristine bed, lined with thin blue blankets. No curtain to cover the window overlooking the roof where he watched the helicopters land above MedBay. There was no simple nightstand, no light bolted to the nightstand.

Instead, there were red flags.

Everywhere, protocol was violated and his skin crawled from the disorder of it all.

Shot one – there where small things. Choking hazards. Mattsi and a few other kids, even the adults he sometimes spoke with, liked to put things in their mouths. He didn't, he hardly put even food in there, but safety, the nurses said.

Shot two – the mess of it all. Ben, you know better than this, put it all away and then come with us, you can see your friends later. You'll see them again, Ben, just pick these things up and come with us.

Shot three – It was just too much for him. Too much in such a small space. It reminded him of nothing but chaos and a train wreck combined with the nightmares about dying on the operating table. The helicopter crashes. The power fails. the prisoners are free and theres nowhere to go

* * *

Ben was suddenly brought to a crashing halt when he felt thick arms wrap around him and stop him in his tracks.

He froze up, and grew limp, the person holding him up.

For just a moment, hallelujah, praise the Lord Almighty, he knew that the nurses had come for him, they'd come to take him back home, and he wanted to turn about and cry into the nameless man's blue uniform. The man would restrain him, and take him back to his bed, but the restraining would be like a hug, to him. Nice and warm, and with people he trusted.

So he went limp. Fell to the floor, and expected the inhumanly strong hospital man to hoist him up and carry him back to the waiting nurses, asking him if he wanted a sedative (they disguised it as food, but he knew, he'd seen too much, he'd known too much) and he'd happily say, "Yes, I do, thank you very much, I do want your magic-making knock-out drug, yessir, branded from the finest form of Secure+Capture resourses."

He bitterly crushed by the sight of the man's, no, the real man's, the bad man's, sleeves, and heard the sound of the woman's distressed voice. And all he could think of was confusion, hatred, anger, and nothing but unnerved insanity that made him sane all the more.

They talked things out. They always did. They had to, but he still liked it better when the nurses did it. These people didn't do it right. They were too quick to jump out and grab him, the nurses kept their distance until Ben said that he wanted to get close.

But these people had no respect, and that was why he was angry.

They were asinine. Utterly stupid, dumber than Mattsi, and that was saying something. Even Mattsi, who thrived on things like food and toys and being unexpectedly hugged and grabbed like he was wasn't as stupid or inane as they were.

He tried going back over to Brendol's. It was much better there, and he liked Brendol better.

The man and the woman wouldn't let him.

There was a lot of screaming, crying and maybe frantic pacing from both the man and the woman before the problem was pinpointed, and finally the stupid man took all his stupid toys and brought them somewhere where Ben couldn't see them.

He didn't want that, he wanted to go home.

He voiced this too, but then they where both crying and now he _really_ wanted to go over to Brendol's. He never did this. He could tell Brendol that he wanted to go home, and Brendol would say "go for it."

* * *

They talked over soup. Tomato soup.

Ben insisted. He said that it was Saturday, the day that they got soup.

The man said otherwise. That he could have whatever he wanted.

Ben cried.

Soup it was.

There was no choice back at the hospital, and Ben knew that he'd be damned if that was going to change. Nurses or no nurses, somebody was going to keep the God-damned peace in this place, and apparently it had to be him.

That meant schedule was to be followed. Maybe they would get the point and send him back to the hospital. Send him back home. Home, where he could help Mattsi eat his soup, and watch the other people eat theirs. Either that, or leftover pizza from Friday.

"Do you like soup?" The woman asked him as he ate.

"Not really." He said, but didn't bother to look at her. It wasn't a serious question, and it was just something that one of his fellow patients at the Ward would say. The nurses would say that he needed to give them his full attention too, but he couldn't be bothered.

"Then why did you want it so badly?" She asked, and he glared at his soup.

"Because today is soup day. We eat soup on soup day. Got it?" He asked, and there was a silence.

This quiet he liked a lot, until the woman decided to talk again. "What other days are there?" She asked. Seemingly polite conversation.

"You'll see when we get there."

And that was that.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a clipboard on the wall.

There were bars in the clipboard.

These bars, set in a way that made them into a table, were marked with different titles that separated them into their designated properties, the first being a name, the second being a place, and the last two, smaller boxes where the time a person left and the time a person came back was printed in either pencil, ink, marker, or whatever was there to write in excluding body fluids and other biological resources.

Ben had demanded the Man to recreate these sheets that he remembered from the Ward. They, as wards of the state and patients of the Ward, always had to sign out of a place and tell where they were going before they left, taking a security guard with them in order to ensure their individual safety. Without this, it seemed bare and almost barbarian. Unruly.

And most frightening, unprotected.

So, he screamed and begged for it, feeling oddly disrupted from his regular schedule.

He even surprised himself with his ferocity, and felt just a little bit bad that he had screamed his throat near raw.

He never meant to do that.

It snuck up on him.

It never snuck up on him in the Ward… he never screamed in the Ward. There was no reason to.

But this huge world confused, upset, agitated, angered, disoriented and strangled him until he felt as though he were really in a coma, looking into his nightmares mixed with his wildest dreams and strangest fantasies.

Damn if he couldn't get the right to scream at that.

The man bent down, grabbed him, and held him still until he stopped thrashing and calling for a security guard, and eventually ended up mumbling reassurances to himself or to Ben, he didn't know – rocking back and forth and being unable to wipe the tears from his face. They stayed like that for a while, and the woman watched them from afar, making noises that Ben didn't understand.

Things grew quiet, and eventually, the man brought a very confused and sickly-feeling Ben to a back office, where he typed up a sheet of paper to look like the sign-out sheets back at the Ward. He showed it to Ben, after a while of doing this.

When looking at it, Ben felt confused. He didn't want a picture of the sheets, he wanted the sheets themselves.

He told the man this, who paled and scooped him into his arms as far as Ben would allow it, and demonstrated how to make the machine next to the computer _(this machine the doctors behind the desks had, the doctors that he and the other patients couldn't reach. They couldn't cross the desk, they weren't allowed. All where apprehended and sent to detention if they did, taken by the security guards that kept them safe. But now, the Man had a machine like theirs. A Doctor machine...)_ spit paper.

And on the pieces of paper were the sheets.

* * *

They spent several days working on these sheets, and soon, it became something regular. Even if he only had to go to the bathroom, Ben was sure that he would pick up a pencil and write down where he was going and what time.

And with that, some sense of normalcy was achieved.

Once, he was questioned on who "Kylo Ren" was. This was the name written down in the space given.

Where they retarded?

This was a fake name. A name that Ben made up for the hospital. He couldn't let them know his real name, he couldn't allow that. He was surrounded by people stricken with all kinds of horrible and debilitating mental disease, strange and horrible afflictions that ate at their psyche and destroyed their very sanity. They where dressed in pale clothing, gowns and pants and forced to go by names like "Bipolar," "Schizoid," "Obsessive-Compulsive," "Depressed," "Psychotic," "Enraged," "Dying."

Ben sometimes found himself sitting in the room with the television, surrounded by Schizoid and Depressed and Dying and staring down at the matching blue uniform that the doctors gave him, sure as the sun was in the sky that he wasn't their breed, their kind, and wasn't going to have a name available for them to take. Ben wasn't crazy. He wasn't sick. He wasn't Conduct Disorder, he wasn't Dysthymic Disorder, he wasn't any of those things.

But Kylo Ren was.

He was like a doll, in that way. Do whatever you like with him, call him whatever awful name you feel like calling him. The doctors would call him up and say that he was Attachment Disorder, that he was Bipolar Disorder, and that his new name was some type of mental fuckup that would be given a new type of medication and sent back to watch the golf channel for three hours hopped up on heavy drugs that weren't for him.

Because they weren't for him. They where for Kylo Ren.

* * *

Sometimes, the man and the woman would talk to him about the schedule, and always his answer would be that they would stick to it until he died, or they could just take him back home and he'd be out of their hair.

The man grew angry.

His eyes narrowed for the first time that Ben could remember, and suddenly, he felt like a whole new person. As if the Man had become someone unreal, a total stranger who invaded his newest home and took over the once quiet Man. The demon, the ghost…

This is what he told himself when he found himself backing away from the man with the cold and hateful eyes, and the accusing tone that he had taken on. He leaned over in his chair across the table and over the Woman with the dead eyes and snapped at him.

He became controlling, a tyrant, and monster that Ben never knew existed until it reared its ugly mug at him at the time when he drew it out of its hiding spot.

Now that Ben knew that there was a devil residing in that man, he became sure that he wouldn't bend to the man's kindness ever again.

So when the man came into the room that he'd hidden in, the one with the large closet that he could hide in, he refused to even look at him. Not when the man opened up the door and let out a heavy sigh of relief, combined with screaming to his wife about having "found him."

He made it sound like it was a foxhunt…

How insulting.

She ran into the room, asking where, before she finally ran back over to the closet, her dead eyes alight but still dark at the same time. Bloodshot, the once soft skin on her cheeks scrubbed raw. Her voice was clogged with worry and at the same time, a deep sadness that only grew once he reached out a hand.

This hand was used to stop her, as she reached in, her arms outstretched to grab him.

And this he couldn't allow.

He didn't know why. Touching wasn't against protocol.

It just felt wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

He liked visiting the schoolgrounds at eleven.

He knew where they where and what time that they let the children out to play because he'd followed Brendol there once, having been bored sitting in his own room with nothing to do. He was asked if he wanted to play a game, but board games wouldn't be fun without pretending to let Gage win. That guy always thought that he was a winner even when it was clear he wasn't, but it was decided that this was probably the only achievement that the simple man could get in the Ward or anyplace else.

So he went to school with Brendol.

He had to wait around for a while, but when the children came out, he watched them carefully from the other side of a fence.

Ben remembered a fence at the Ward, when he and some other patients where let outside to play on a bunch of playground equipment for a little while before they all headed back inside. He normally stayed with the nurses, who in turn stayed with him. But either way, there were fences surrounding this, but he never paid much attention to them other than how he could hear them breathing when he got near. They were alive, humming in satisfaction at his coming closer than the other children did, and purred when he came close to petting the wires. It stung, so he couldn't do it much, but the living fence liked it and that made him happy to do it again.

* * *

It was like a flood, watching them all pile out of the doors and scramble to get their short exercise in before they were corralled again inside of the giant building that comfortingly reminded him of a smaller Ward.

Which prompted him to try and join.

He spent a while playing tag with Brendol and his friends, who quickly accepted him due to his having been outside and not belonging to the school, like they where. It made him feel like a stray dog, which was both fun and kind of relaxing. Wouldn't he like to be a dog sometime, free to chew bones and dig holes and bite people when he wanted to.

But the dog can wait. He was a normal child, now, like Brendol.

Speaking of the children he promised a few of them he'd show them how he got out, only if they'd take him to their classes inside of the building. One child, a boy named Dopheld agreed to this, and they resumed their game.

Ben was unable to fully commit himself to slapping and running from children as he was too busy thinking of what the inside of the school looked like, wondering if they had a Rec. room, a kitchen that they weren't allowed to go into. Security guards and nurses and doctors. He was sure that it would be just like inside of the Ward, he knew it, and wanted in on their mini-Ward. Maybe they would take him home then…

He thought back to the man and the Woman, back at their home.

He imagined that they would be upset if they found him gone… He had come to the conclusion that they thought of him as their pet.

He'd send a postcard.

* * *

In about an hour or two, he found himself sitting in one of the schoolrooms and filling out a paper that they were given. This was just a simple worksheet like the ones that the nurses and the woman named Jackie had given to him when he was back at the Ward. He was told that this was his work, and he knew all of it. However, it was repetitive, and he began to wonder if they really needed this work done or they where just trying to find something educational for him to do.

So, with this idea in his head, he slipped into the Kylo Ren name (as he had put on the top of his paper) and only did half of it.

However, the action of writing this name, and then looking back to it, reminded him of the signout sheet that was now left half written in, sitting without a time when he came back, and long after he should have. He had told the signout sheet that he was at Brendol's. And Brendol was at school. He was sure that school didn't belong to the Hux family.

It wasn't like he _meant_ to leave the household without permission. It was just that Brendol was going to a place and Kylo wanted to tag along. He thought that Brendol was his Escort, as there was meant to be one at the Ward. Brendol was not a security guard, but he acted like one, and that would be enough for him to qualify as Armed Protection.

But he knew that following a guard without a badge very well could be against the rules and therefore had no reason to hide from the punishment that he would receive.

So he raised his hand, just like the rest of the students did. They liked to do this whenever they wanted to speak. This wasn't that different from the Ward, except, the students actually raised their hands.

The woman at the front of the class picked him out from among them, but then looked confused, a look of bizarre realization filling her once blank expression, before she glanced out to the hallway. "Where are you supposed to be?" She asked him, getting up. "You don't belong in my class…"

She was smart.

"He came with me, miss. He played with us at recess and he wanted to come to school with us, so I let him." Brendol said smartly, and a few of the students once staring at him shifted their attention to the red-haired boy for just a second before whispering among themselves, smiles spreading across their faces. It was like sharks smelling blood.

"And where did he come from, Bren?" She asked, and Brendol shrugged.

"Home, I guess."

She looked concerned, her face pinching in the beginnings of worry, before she sent another teacher across the hall to go get another woman.

Now, this was beginning to look like the Ward, Kylo thought, pleased. The nurses would all come together when something happened with one of the patients.

However, he added, with oncoming dread replacing his short happiness, this only happened when there was some sort of misconduct going on. Some breaking of the rules. And this time, they were on to him.

But he was sure he didn't do anything bad. He just did what they told him to do, and that was to sort out vowels, adjectives and nouns. Not that hard, really…nothing that was worth giving a shot for. Nothing that he would have to go away for…

Eventually, a woman took him out into the hall and led him out into a different room, down at the front of the building, where there sat a woman at a desk who asked for his name and where he lived. She was nosy, and wasn't very kind, as he knew from the television shows that he watched featuring these kinds of people. However, she would try to seduce him, so it was best that he find his missing paperwork and then do nothing while the camera watched her.

He gave out his name, but he wasn't quite sure of what street he lived on.

Phone number was out of the question, he didn't even know how to use a phone.

The woman that came with him told the lady that one of the students aught to know where he lived.

So Brendol was called to the office, and was meant to give Kylo's address (whatever that was) to the woman at the desk, and with a sneer of distaste (and some disguised fascination) he left the room to go back to his classroom.

* * *

It wasn't long before the Man and the Woman showed up all in a fuss, and Ben felt himself growing embarrassed from their huge show of emotion. The man bending down to grab him and the woman doing the same, both of them telling how scared they where, how they called the police and thought that he were dead. How they searched everywhere and wasted their time.

Their drama was funny to him. They never did stop their comedy show, now, did they? Always over-reacting.

But he went home with them, and he listened to them talk about only leaving the house when they knew where he was going, and that he couldn't go to the school because they were thinking on homeschooling him, that he wasn't fit for the school environment.

He didn't care. School was boring. It may have looked like the Ward on the outside, but it wasn't on the in. It was nothing but a place to dump children for a while, and all of them were like Brendol, making the magic of the boy seem more like frog roadkill. He blamed children.

But from then on, he wasn't allowed to leave the house, which made him feel all the more cooped up but just a little less confused. They watched him all the time, and doubled in their ridiculous pampering, going by the guidance of a man that showed up at their house and tackled Ben to the floor.

 _(This was a moment that Ben wasn't proud of, and began a landslide of horror and manhandling that Ben bit the Man for eventually, which stopped the whole "holding" thing once and for all.)_

They cycled through person after person, and therapist after therapist until eventually, there came a change that Ben wasn't quite prepared for, and maybe was a little bit scared of.

The woman left that day.

Her eyes were deader. He cheeks bony, her hair stringy. Her skin was dry and her lips were cracked. Her voice was raw and her cloths draped over her like blankets.

She packed those cloths and her perfume smell, took a cab and was never seen again.

So all that was left was the man, who became somber and quiet.

So did Ben.

Things slowed down, the man began drinking, but after an incident with a screwdriver and Ben nearly cutting off a finger, he narrowed it down to two or three beers at night, after Ben had gone to sleep.

They got a dog, a Newfoundland named Chewie. The Man said that he was going to make meat of the dog if it shat on the floor, and would be particularly chewy when it did.

But Chewie was a good dog, and did no such thing. He hung around, ate table scraps, and was a living tissue for all the times that both the Man and Ben cried into its big, wooly coat. But it sat there, it's dark eyes squinty but knowing, and it's massive form open to a long talk, drunk or sober.

When Ben turned twelve, Chewie was one.

Leslie was thirty-two.

Leslie wanted Ben to call her "mom."


End file.
